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thats making a large assumption. i'm in no way certain about this, but if it hasn't ever conclusively detected waves for certain, how can we be sure it would have detected them in this case, even if they were there? Both the existence of the waves AND the ability to detect them are at least in *some* doubt. while they can say they may be pretty sure, one way or the other, this in no way will cause people to drop their models of the GRBs that require gravity waves. it may cause a lot of them to change their minds, but there'll still be people who think its possible, and scientifically, it would be.
If they really wanted to be certain about *this* scenario, they'd have to test LIGO again and see if they can detect gravity waves in a controlled system. however, this is obviously easier said than done (seeing as how they most likely would have done this if it were easy...). There's an unknown variable in the experiment and therefore can't be compared to any control. Normally, that would be called a bad experiment, but in this case, its probably forgivable seeing as how humans have little control over what happens in the universe.
Just pointing out again, I could be completely wrong. This is just what I've gathered from the small amount of data available to me. i'm a computer engineer, not a physicist.
but you've still at least added a level of frustration. photos won't always be an option, nor would memorizing. like i said, you're normally just stopping the amateurs. obviously, pros will be able to get past it, but even then, it takes a bit. i'm willing to bet a majority of people on this site can't get past drm without someone else first cracking it and posting the crack. drm *does* work on small levels. its once you try to impose drm on the entire country that you have a problem. but when you have personal drm on business documents, it will do a lot to keep the competitor down the street from easily being able to copy anything. and beyond that, sometimes drm is just a safety precaution in the sense that while you don't want a watermark to be visible on screen, you also don't want it to be accidentally printed. visible watermarks will not always be a viable option. there's no reason to be upset with drm in general. in a small scope, it *will* cover your ass against most attacks, because in general, most attacks are *not* from professional spies or hackers. encryption has its ups and downs as well. hell, encryption is just another form of drm to begin with, so at that point its a semantical argument.
DRM doesn't always have to imply prohibitive measures. Sometimes it just requires the user to follow protocol and what not. It can be used just for a more customized and much more adaptable workflow other than just sending encrypted files back and forth with a pretty picture on them if you don't want them printed. DRM *can* be used for efficiency. We're not talking about putting DRM on a customer's purchase. we're talking about internal uses. Information thats *supposed* to be private.
thats how it's being used by big media. thats not what is in question in this story. this isn't about selling something to a consumer and then wanting to control how its being shared. its about a business wanting to control how something is shared within its own business. in simpler terms, its sort of like, Entity A wants to share Document X with Entity B, but no one else. DRM has its uses and in those cases, its usually relatively useful because its only going to get cracked when someone *really* wants that specific data and that someone has the know-how (or knows someone) to do so. Those two requirements limit the possibility of a leak to a relatively decent level. You then just need to work on stopping the professional saboteurs from getting your info cause the DRM takes care of the amateurs. Plus there are non-"protect from outsiders" usages as well. Just like mentioned earlier by someone else, you only want one type of document to be able to be printed, instead of another (such as draft copies). It's to stop mistakes from occurring, not to just hold some control.
DRM isn't inherently evil. Its just some of the uses are.
ugh. in a line of dominoes, i knock down one and eventually the last one gets knocked down. does that mean the first and last one are connected? now, lets try to make this more analogous. you have NO IDEA where the last domino is, you just know whether it falls or not. now, you knock down the first domino and the last one falls. you can't see the last domino, you have no idea where it actually is. you have no idea how much space or 'stuff' occurs in between... why would you jump to the conclusion that OBVIOUSLY the first domino is connected to the last domino?
And why not get cranky? Talk about trying to make an uphill battle even more difficult. If you *really* wanted to get rid of religion, forcefully trying to remove it is probably the stupidest thing you can do. Cause thats always worked in the past. Hey, i'm going to yell at you till you agree with me. Hey, maybe i'll get violent at some point when you don't listen and obviously the only way to deal with conflict is with escalating violence. Oh wait... hey, this reminds me of something... Oh yea... the EXACT same thing we get mad at religious people for.
If you don't want religious folk to try and influence your world, its completely hypocritical of you to try and influence theirs. And if we are all just random bits of matter, well, you really can't make any justification for caring about anything other than yourself... or if you do, it really can't be backed up by more than opinion. Any reason you come up with is purely subjective at that point. So, if you've decided to try and force your beliefs on someone else and have no reason to do so, under your own reasoning, you're just as bad as they are.
i'm not. i've been justifying both points of view. i'm not attacking your views in any way. the only thing i'm attacking, are YOUR attacks on someone else's point of view. jeez. i've only said that nothing is certain. so yea, i guess i'm attacking your view that something is certain. whoops. my bad. even though, of course, under your school of thought, nothing can be certain. therefore you contradict yourself... but hey, wait, you shouldn't do that... you can't attack any points of view, even if they're yours.
wow, somebody forgot to kiss their mommy before going off to kindergarten today and are feeling cranky.:'(
Thoughts are an end result to the process of thinking. Neurons may fire when we think, but we've yet to ever find a way to link them to actual thoughts. There are an infinite amount of thoughts, but a finite combination of neurons firing. There's something else there. Neurons firing may support thinking, but there's no direct link between neurons and the end result. Just because they happen at the same time does not prove they are linked with nothing in between. Come on, even science has said that just because two things happen at once does not mean they are necessarily related. Every morning I've woken up, the sun was shining on my side of the earth... wow... it must be MY fault!?::gasp::
ugh. you keep symbolizing religion as something its not and then ridiculing that notion and going ahead and using that as an argument that religion is false.
A Spook In The Sky that Wills the World? That's as illogical as it gets!
I never said existence had to be logical. You can't know the world beyond your own senses (no one can). Who are you to say what's really going on in it? We logically interpret inputs, yes. Logically, since I have no goddamn clue what's happening beyond my senses, I do *not* claim to know for certain what's going on (which you seem to find it really easy to do). Science interprets that which we can observe... and only that. What is to say there isn't something else that cannot be observed through scientific means? Logically, if one thing exists, that which can be observed through scientific means, its only logical to assume the possibility of that which cannot be observed through scientific means. Logically, one must assume that if in existence, there exists that which obeys logic, one must assume the possibility of that which does not obey logic.
Wrong. They appeared because of the way our brains are organized.
Marvin Minsky (a principal founder of Al) and Michael Gazzaniga (one of the major workers in split-brain research) have independently come to a virtually identical model of the mind. Both view minds as vast collections of interacting, largely parallel (co-conscious) modules, or "agents." The lowest level of such a society of agents consists of a small number of nerve cells that innervate a section of muscle. A few of the higher level modules have been isolated in clever experiments by Gazzaniga, some of them on split-brain patients.
One surprise from this work is that we seem to have our mental modules arranged in a way that guarantees we will form beliefs. What we believe in depends, at least in part, on what we are exposed to and the order in which we are exposed. Gazzaniga argues that we slowly evolved the ability to form beliefs because the ability provides a major advantage in surviving. Being able to infer, that is to form new beliefs, and to learn, in the sense of acquiring such beliefs from others, was a major advance over learning by trial and error. Being able to pass the rare new ways our ancestors found for chipping rock or making pots from person to person and generation to generation was vital in allowing humans to spread over the earth. But as this ability became the norm, communicating human minds formed a new "primal soup" in which a new kind of non-biological evolution, that of replicating information patterns or memes, could get started. A wide variety of competing memes has evolved in the intervening seventy thousand years or so. It should not be surprising that the survivors of this process, like astrology or religions, are so effective at inducing their hosts to spread and defend them.
I did not read one thing in there to support the last sentence. Sorry. At least assuming no extra text was left out, they're referring to 'beliefs' in the most general form possible (ie, the belief that chipping rocks and using the sharper pieces to kill animals is more efficient than using dull rocks). Nothing there gives the advantage of 'making up' religion. its only in things experienced that beliefs are created. did someone experience god? i dunno. i wasn't there. neither were you.
What... no. Science explores and explains the world by the scientific method. Religion is a delusion-inducing disease. They're "competing ideas" in the memetic sense, but one systematically explores reality, and the other is a dangerous delusion about an imaginary friend that really hates you unless you worship it.
Stop comparing apples and oranges. I'm not trying to justify one specific religion. Until you target your arguments away from a specific religion, i do not see any intellectual result coming from this exchange. If you actually focus on only the notion of religion,
No. Correlation not causation. What makes people generous and charitable is, when they have enough resources, then, their basic urge to cooperate with other human beings overrides their aversion to loss and so they share their resources. (Those are evolved species-specific behaviours. Without them we wouldn't be the species that influences their environment the most, we'd be solitary primates in a world ruled by scaled things.) This is complete bull as there are those who have given up virtually everything in their life in service of others. Mother Teresa didn't just go and say "I have enough extra to give" and give away that extra. She gave herself. Period. And to say that all those with an abundance of wealth instinctively share it? Please. Trump and Gates do donate to charity but they can get away with donating a hell of a lot more before they even start to feel the affects of giving away the money. Your "reason" here is just a rationale for you to say people do things out of some instinctive nature and not from what they have felt through some connection with some given religion.
Yes. The research on the atomic bomb has brought us nuclear power, ending our dependence on those fanatics who have all the oil.
Oh, wait...
Chemical weapons, noone uses them anymore. (Or where?) Biological weapons are a by-product of the advances in medicine. You'd want to live in a world with no chemical industry? That means no computers too, you know. And with a 50% chance to live long enough to eat solid food? Research on the atomic bomb DID bring us nuclear power. Thats fine. But I'm just saying it brought the atomic bomb. It ended the lives of a huge number of people. I'm just saying just as religion has been used by those in power to destroy, so has science. They are both neither inherently evil or good. they're just tools to interpret reality. I never said i'd want to live in a world without science. You're trying to make me sound as if I want everyone to be religious. Thats far from the truth. I'm just saying there's no real basis (outside of science) to say science is better than religion. i LOVE science. i follow science. i follow no organized religious structure. I'm just saying you've given absolutely no reason to 'disprove' science, despite your claims to the contrary.
science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. *some* religions may be, but its not inherently mutually exclusive. thats a property of the given religion in question, not of religion itself. many people believe only various portions of many of the organized religions because they just exclude the points that don't make sense. and its their right to as well since many of the rules they choose not to follow were made by man and not even attributed to any influence from gods or God.
I find it comical that any educated man thinks he understands all thats going on. I only admit that I have a belief of whats going on and I may be wrong. You call yourself certain. I find it a laughable notion to assume that you can know for sure that what we observe is really what's going on. Since its untestable, unverifiable, its only an idea at best. You interpret reality how you want. The fact that no God or gods have talked to you does not mean they've never talked to anybody (i personally don't think they have either, but i can't be certain). The fact that logic is a comprehensive system does not necessarily mean there is no system beneath it that cannot be described by logic. You say science provides facts, but its provides facts based under its own definition. Logic excludes anything illogical, but thats not to say they cannot exist. In fact, the more logic of people may be blinded to this other reality. hell, maybe magic is possible, i have no clue. i'm an extremely logical mind and logically speaking i cannot with certainty say that reality as we know it is concrete. i have no proof of its existence beyond my senses and we all know the senses can be fooled quite easily (we found that out through science =P). I'm fine when someone jokes about religion, but to ridicule it as close-minded as the religious zealots. I'm just saying until you can prove existence beyond your own fingers to me, then maybe you'll get somewhere with debunking religion. But until we can get past that last layer of how to interpret existence & reality, science is just a way to look at the world and in its OWN eyes, its obviously better than religion. religion is the same. i've chosen to look through the scientific viewpoint, but i keep in mind that they're two different views on the same thing. they're allowed to coincide if you let them. different sects of religion have all interpreted 'religion' in their own way. personally, i find they all did it incorrectly, but to point out one (or millions) of flaws in their system does not mean that somewhere there's a seed of truth that it all sprouted from.
Maybe i'll even give you that ridiculing some of a specific religion's ill-founded tenets is perfectly acceptable (as you do in your arguments... none of which really speak against religion itself, only specific forms), but to ridicule the *notion* of religion is ridiculous in it self... logically (not scientifically) speaking.
Making jokes about it for the sake of humor is completely welcome. I find political incorrectness highly amusing.
religious ideas are as valid as scientific ones, you just don't have to agree with them. i don't agree with most of them. however, i'm not going to assume that simply because i think a certain way, that all other ways of thinking are false. religious ideas sprouted in various parts of the world without interaction with each other. to me, thats enough evidence that its worth thinking that possibly there's something else. since all other evidence that was ever proposed was given to man, a lot of it was abused. just as science can be abused, so can religion. some religion is harder to justify than others, but its simply arrogant to assume that its based completely in lies. i don't know the truth about existence, neither do you, nor does science. i don't see why science should be granted a monopoly on truth. science itself cannot be proven beyond observation. "I've done it x times, therefore I assume it happens all the time." What's the value of x have to be until the second statement is always true? That's what science is. I believe in science. I just don't see why followers of science have to go and act all superior. Back in the day, thats exactly how the religious folk acted against the non-religious. I'm am not so foolish as to assume I'm certain that science has all the answers. I believe it does, but I'll admit that I know there's a possibility I'm wrong. religion and science can coexist. its just both science and religion are too stubborn on both their points. religion won't give up on the foolish idea that it is 100% correct and has no need to change. Science won't give up on the idea that maybe there exists things that it can't explain. Most religious institutions have become overgrown with dogma introduced by man and has no spiritual reasoning behind it. Just because it's had its fair share of corruption, does not mean that everything within it is false. The very idea that a majority of religions share some common basic tenets is cause for further exploration. Philosophy and religion are extremely important to society. They gave rise to science. Science for science's sake is extremely dangerous. If I could create an AI so powerful that it'd most likely take over mankind, should I do it? Of course not. But if I were to be a true follower of science, I'd have to. It's progress. Its technology and shouldn't be kept in check, right? Science and religion both have faults and advantages. Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We have guided missiles, but misguided men." Science needs to be kept in check. Unfortunately science may not be enough to keep itself in check. That's where philosophy comes in. We shouldn't do anything we can just because we can. And not everything in religion is definitely based in fiction. I'll give you that a lot of it is fiction, but for so many people to come to the same conclusions w/o science... i think there has to be something there. maybe there's another side to logic. there's the cold logical world, but maybe there's a metaphysical world along side it that we're all tapped into somewhat. i have no friggin' clue. but there are things in this world that are still unexplainable by science (a lot of times people call them hoaxes, but some of them are pretty damn convincing) and that science even says can't be possible. granted, just because it can't explain it now doesn't mean it never can, but there's also no proof that it ever will either. science is just a way to interpret reality. religion is another. you say science is superior because it uses the scientific method. whoopity doo.
I believe in science too. I'm just trying to get the different schools of thought to start working together instead of warring with each other. Maybe its not a war in the physical sense, but there is a war. And hey, if there's no afterlife and no reason to attribute value to anything cause its all just random bits of matter, why care about the rest of the world in the first place?
I'll admit it was a little overzealous, but still not far from the point. Wanting to enforce some strict way of thinking and to outlaw and disallow free thought is very close to being terroristic. While it may not be as explosive as a suicide bomber, its just as destructive.
your reasoning on your first point was already proven false. there are many things that we do not see that we now know to be in existence. of course, back in the day, if you said it existed, you were considered crazy. saying you can't find it, therefore it doesn't exist, is far from being an exhaustive proof.
a natural god does not imply humans are allowed god-like behavior. just as we can exert rule over lower beings, why do we assume we're the highest form of existence in nature? just because you can't see it, you assume its not there? how do we know there's not some higher level of being in our own realm of existence? why do you assume we are the pinnacle of evolution? hell, maybe we're allowed to evolve to gods, but that doesn't mean we have to be capable of it now. i don't know the answers, i just feel its a little early for one side or the other to claim victory. yea, science proves to be more useful here, but maybe there really is an afterlife. maybe death just frees our consciousness from this physical cage. who am i to know? maybe there is something to be gained for the afterlife, here in this life. i don't believe it, but i don't see any reason for me to then go off and say my point of view has been proven beyond a doubt. What can be easier to believe than "well, i don't see it, therefore its not there." Just because no one wants it doesn't make it not easy. It's easy to stick your hand in a toilet and eat crap, doesn't mean anybody is gonna do it (and no, i'm not comparing your theory to that, i'm just using an extreme example that desire doesn't have to play a role in whether something is easy or not). The harder beliefs to hold are the ones that are actually difficult to believe, ie less reason to believe it is so. It'd be really hard to hold a belief that mice are actually running experiments on us and they're responsible for the creation of the world. The less evidence there is, the harder the belief. However, that doesn't make it not possible. Just the fact that religion crept up in isolated spots and didn't spread from one source lends credence to the idea that religion may have its foot in the door of something bigger but just might not have gotten it right yet.
and yes, its a valid theory that everything is a mistake. though its far from being 'easy' to prove. it lacks any testable characteristics just like virtually every other theory of existence.
than stop condemning other points of view. thats all my post is trying to point out. you ridicule another point of view, but really have no basis to say your pov is any better than someone else's.
Cause & effect can be no more than circumstantial. It can never be certain that time flows forward. Perhaps it flows backward and we only perceive things as such. When you get into the realm of existence beyond what we can observe (such as the natural order of things), all your observations are moot. They can only go so far. Patterns are far from being overwhelming evidence. How do we know the future can not affect the past? Cause & effect already has a glaring flaw in the creation of existence. If cause & effect has such overwhelming evidence, where was it in play there? Effect: creation, cause: ???? I invite you to fill in the blank. Until you can fill it in without any doubt (and last I checked, the model for the beginning of the universe was far from universally accepted and changes dramatically all the time). Yea, you can say 'big bang'. But what caused the big bang? Where did the matter come from in the big bang? Doesn't the law of conservation have to apply here? Where'd all that energy come from?
Faith is believing something that you feel is true, but can't prove. You believe cause & effect is universal, that's fine. So do I. However, some folks believe faith has already proven itself. Maybe you and I just have a different level of how much circumstantial evidence amounts to 'overwhelming.' Maybe using logic to prove itself superior falls under the same fallacy as religious people using faith to prove itself superior. Maybe we all just need to realize that we don't know everything, there are unknowns in this universe, and we should stop calling each other names and try to find a way to coexist peacefully. If you really want to go about this scientifically, you'd have to admit there's a chance you're wrong. i mean, until you can actually prove something to be false, how can you discount it as a possibility, no matter how small? there's a chance i'm just a floating consciousness dreaming about all of this, but i don't believe it to be true. doesn't mean its not. doesn't mean that someone who does believe it is stupid either. they may prove themselves to be if they can't provide reasonable arguments, like a large portion, but not all of religion has done. Some religious people are completely sane and have arguments just as strong as yours are for science. The problem comes when trying to choose who should make the rules. Personally, I think science is the best choice, though technically I'm a little biased. personally, i feel science is the least biased of all possible schools of thought. again, thats just how i feel.
some people may find their assumptions about religion 'useful' for their purposes. what right do you have to say your assumptions (based solely on them 'being useful') is any better than someone else's? My whole argument is that you shouldn't discount something just because you disagree with it. If you can prove it to be false, than so be it. But, contrary to popular belief, religion has yet to be proven false. It may not have been proven true, but that doesn't mean its not. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it not so. I agree that I think religion is mostly false, but its my belief that its false. I'd never go out and impose that belief on someone else. And religion wasn't founded to fight wars or to condemn some other point of view as immoral (though apparently science can condemn another point of view out of some sense of superiority). Religion says its true cause its stated to be so. Science says its true cause its stated to be so. They are what most of everyone's arguments boil down to. Yea, I go for science, but as an intellectual thinker, I can't say the other is absolutely wrong. I don't believe it but I won't deny them the right to believe it. Nor will I be ignorant enough to think that I have all the answers. Always be prepared to be wrong. I don't think I am, but I might be. Hell, maybe it is the right thing to go out condemning people for believing in something different than you, but thats not what I believe. So, maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but personally, I believe there's no point to be overly zealous on either side. It just makes you look as crazy as them.
Actually, he brings up a fairly good point. While the brain may be used in thinking, no one has ever physically located a "thought." While, it may be jumping to conclusions to call it the soul, its definitely a wide held belief that 'thoughts' may very well be intangible.
Bonus: Can you formulate an answer that does not make you inherently superior to religions people? That's funny that you can't, cause I can. I believe in science wholeheartedly. I just realize that there's very little evidence available to prove or disprove any religiously held beliefs. The notion that these ideas sprouted in various places completely separated actually lends credence to their existence. Its enough to say its at least possible. However, personally, I've found that science has brought us further along, therefore I throw my weight behind them. It's not that I chose science over religion. I just could never get myself to believe it. However, that doesn't mean someone else can't or that I'm intellectually superior just because they believe something I can't. Maybe I lack some understanding that has been blinded by pure reason and cold logic. Who am I to know? Logically, its possible. So, honestly, religion and science are at worst competing ideas, one not better than the other. At best, they're two sides of the same coin and can co-exist.
If they need a reason for war, they'll listen to the priest telling them to go die for God. If they need a reason for war, they'll listen to anybody.
Million of years of evolution can't be changed, but, just suppress the environmental conditions that flip the behavioral switch to "war mode", and the dire consequences of religions will all be avoided : they won't be the xenophobic meme that mediates the dehumanization of the people's perception of their neighbours, if the conditions in which xenophobic memes thrive (impending lack of resources) just never happens anymore. Its much more difficult than that. If you remove all conditions that would cause this supposed 'war mode,' there is a high chance that it will just fester under the surface and eventually explode from some unknown circumstance. Violence is a part of us and of nature itself. It cannot be suppressed by simply saying, "hey, there's enough for everyone." People will argue over anything. And some resources are not in full abundance. One of hand that I can think of is women. While there may be enough women for every guy, its not unheard of for guys to fight over women, or vice versa. religion is not the only reason behind violence and its a foolhardy thing to preach otherwise.
You don't understand. I vehemently defend my position, which is that the religions should be buried under the global scream of "ENOUGH!"... and no religion has any right whatsoever to peaceful dialogue, with THEIR track records!
When did any religion ever turn peaceful?
They're all
1/an excuse for the regime they serve
2/a set of fairytales that explains how the world came to be (not, but it took us a while to find out)
3/a set of answers to the Eternal Questions
4/a social bonding thing
5/an excuse to go kill the neighbours in the name of God, but our real need is to either conquer their place so as to use their resources, or get all killed so that our genes will replicate when their men will have captured our women. (Capture-bonding is a survival trait coming directly from this causal loop btw.) Those are all ways in which religion was abused and those who did so were hiding behind it, but they did not always believe it. And if they did, it was usually misinterpreted. When did religion ever turn peaceful? when it is responsible for a huge amount of charity and sacrifice the well-being of the rest of the world. Science is a double-edged sword as well. Was it peaceful when it was used to create atomic and nuclear weapons? Was it peaceful when it created the worst weapons(chemical, biological, and others) known in the history of mankind?
You need to stop providing a straw man argument. You're assumption is false, that crack-addicts are the same as religious folks. You may believe that, but its far from being objective. Unfortunately, you provide no real basis of reasoning that you're belief is somehow better and that somehow entitles you to forcefully remove any competing argument and then have the audacity to say that if anyone else forcefully tries to keep their belief alive, that they much be terrorists. If you remove all the subjective statements from your post, you sound EXACTLY like a terrorist. You are zealous of your belief and you have no problem forcefully imposing it upon others. I have no problem with religion as long as it doesn't impose itself upon me. But it'd be hypocritical of me to than go do the exact same thing. Science zealots are nutcases just as much as religious zealots are.
Personally, I like the proof that you've provided.
Yeah, disproven. There is no God. Religion is full of shit. Personally, if you want someone to actually engage in any useful discourse, you must provide some sort of statement that has more of a foundation than, "its false, cause I said so." Yes, personally, I find science more useful than religion, but personally I find you science zealots to be just as crazy as the religious ones. Its the people like you that scare away ones of faith from ever giving way to that, in my opinion, which is a more rational way of thinking. You're post is full of just as many assumptions as religion, all of which are founded in nothing else other than a strong belief that it is so. yes, atrocities have been done in the name of religion, but atrocities have been done in the name of reason as well. Anyway, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I can't even make an argument against yours, because you failed to provide one.
- The world follows logical rules
In fact illogical things can not exist. Prove illogical things CANNOT exist. The burden of proof is on you, my friend. You're the one making the statement, not I. I hold beliefs, but I do not dare call any of them factual. Science never set out to prove anything. Only try to explain things as best it can.
- No god
It's impossible for anything "supernatural" to exist in this world, it would simply be natural. What stops god from being natural then? A semantical argument is a weak one.
- All 'things' including humans are purely conceptual
We are all swirling vortexes of particles interacting with other particals. We only have the perception of consciousness. And 'things' only exist in purely subjective standpoints. I particularly enjoy that second sentence. What is it that has a perception of consciousness? The only thing that we have than can hold perceptions is our consciousness itself. How can our consciousness have only a perception of being a consciousness? If the consciousness exists, isn't that all that is required to be? It's far from a fact, but its hard to argue against "I think, therefore I am." To say one's existence is only a perception of existence is quite difficult to swallow. Something needs to hold the perception. In the statement, "I have a perception of consciousness," what is really defined by 'I'? 'I' in it's simplest form is specifically that consciousness. It's a personal truth. I know 'I am'. I cannot prove it to you, nor you to me. Even if it is all a big facade perpetrated by some unknown force, I still 'am.' Existence should be enough to prove itself. If it exists, its fair to say it exists.
I know that it's the easiest belief to hold, that there's nothing. but it fails to provide any objective answers just as much as any other particular belief does.
The whole idea of "belief" itself defies reason. Do you 'believe' in cause & effect? it can never be proven. What about the basic postulates that ALL of mathematics are based upon... which have yet to ever be proven? Both are just things believed to be true. Neither of which has any proof beyond circumstantial evidence. For you to assume that your assumptions are somehow superior to someone else's assumptions is highly arrogant. When scientists themselves can hold mutually exclusive theories about something, it holds to reason that science isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be. Personally, yes, I do find science to be more enlightening than religion, but I'd never go as far as to say I'm certain I'm right. Hell, thats one of the big things science has taught us. Always admit there's a chance you're wrong, because 99.99% of the time, you missed something.
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thats making a large assumption. i'm in no way certain about this, but if it hasn't ever conclusively detected waves for certain, how can we be sure it would have detected them in this case, even if they were there? Both the existence of the waves AND the ability to detect them are at least in *some* doubt. while they can say they may be pretty sure, one way or the other, this in no way will cause people to drop their models of the GRBs that require gravity waves. it may cause a lot of them to change their minds, but there'll still be people who think its possible, and scientifically, it would be.
If they really wanted to be certain about *this* scenario, they'd have to test LIGO again and see if they can detect gravity waves in a controlled system. however, this is obviously easier said than done (seeing as how they most likely would have done this if it were easy...). There's an unknown variable in the experiment and therefore can't be compared to any control. Normally, that would be called a bad experiment, but in this case, its probably forgivable seeing as how humans have little control over what happens in the universe.
Just pointing out again, I could be completely wrong. This is just what I've gathered from the small amount of data available to me. i'm a computer engineer, not a physicist.
but you've still at least added a level of frustration. photos won't always be an option, nor would memorizing. like i said, you're normally just stopping the amateurs. obviously, pros will be able to get past it, but even then, it takes a bit. i'm willing to bet a majority of people on this site can't get past drm without someone else first cracking it and posting the crack. drm *does* work on small levels. its once you try to impose drm on the entire country that you have a problem. but when you have personal drm on business documents, it will do a lot to keep the competitor down the street from easily being able to copy anything. and beyond that, sometimes drm is just a safety precaution in the sense that while you don't want a watermark to be visible on screen, you also don't want it to be accidentally printed. visible watermarks will not always be a viable option. there's no reason to be upset with drm in general. in a small scope, it *will* cover your ass against most attacks, because in general, most attacks are *not* from professional spies or hackers. encryption has its ups and downs as well. hell, encryption is just another form of drm to begin with, so at that point its a semantical argument.
DRM doesn't always have to imply prohibitive measures. Sometimes it just requires the user to follow protocol and what not. It can be used just for a more customized and much more adaptable workflow other than just sending encrypted files back and forth with a pretty picture on them if you don't want them printed. DRM *can* be used for efficiency. We're not talking about putting DRM on a customer's purchase. we're talking about internal uses. Information thats *supposed* to be private.
Patent Examiners should post ALL technology-related patents onto Slashdot and then just wait to see what WE have to say about it =P
I say they should just re-use XP.
thats how it's being used by big media. thats not what is in question in this story. this isn't about selling something to a consumer and then wanting to control how its being shared. its about a business wanting to control how something is shared within its own business. in simpler terms, its sort of like, Entity A wants to share Document X with Entity B, but no one else. DRM has its uses and in those cases, its usually relatively useful because its only going to get cracked when someone *really* wants that specific data and that someone has the know-how (or knows someone) to do so. Those two requirements limit the possibility of a leak to a relatively decent level. You then just need to work on stopping the professional saboteurs from getting your info cause the DRM takes care of the amateurs. Plus there are non-"protect from outsiders" usages as well. Just like mentioned earlier by someone else, you only want one type of document to be able to be printed, instead of another (such as draft copies). It's to stop mistakes from occurring, not to just hold some control.
DRM isn't inherently evil. Its just some of the uses are.
ugh. in a line of dominoes, i knock down one and eventually the last one gets knocked down. does that mean the first and last one are connected? now, lets try to make this more analogous. you have NO IDEA where the last domino is, you just know whether it falls or not. now, you knock down the first domino and the last one falls. you can't see the last domino, you have no idea where it actually is. you have no idea how much space or 'stuff' occurs in between... why would you jump to the conclusion that OBVIOUSLY the first domino is connected to the last domino?
And why not get cranky? Talk about trying to make an uphill battle even more difficult. If you *really* wanted to get rid of religion, forcefully trying to remove it is probably the stupidest thing you can do. Cause thats always worked in the past. Hey, i'm going to yell at you till you agree with me. Hey, maybe i'll get violent at some point when you don't listen and obviously the only way to deal with conflict is with escalating violence. Oh wait... hey, this reminds me of something... Oh yea... the EXACT same thing we get mad at religious people for.
If you don't want religious folk to try and influence your world, its completely hypocritical of you to try and influence theirs. And if we are all just random bits of matter, well, you really can't make any justification for caring about anything other than yourself... or if you do, it really can't be backed up by more than opinion. Any reason you come up with is purely subjective at that point. So, if you've decided to try and force your beliefs on someone else and have no reason to do so, under your own reasoning, you're just as bad as they are.
i'm not. i've been justifying both points of view. i'm not attacking your views in any way. the only thing i'm attacking, are YOUR attacks on someone else's point of view. jeez. i've only said that nothing is certain. so yea, i guess i'm attacking your view that something is certain. whoops. my bad. even though, of course, under your school of thought, nothing can be certain. therefore you contradict yourself... but hey, wait, you shouldn't do that... you can't attack any points of view, even if they're yours.
wow, somebody forgot to kiss their mommy before going off to kindergarten today and are feeling cranky. :'(
::gasp::
Thoughts are an end result to the process of thinking. Neurons may fire when we think, but we've yet to ever find a way to link them to actual thoughts. There are an infinite amount of thoughts, but a finite combination of neurons firing. There's something else there. Neurons firing may support thinking, but there's no direct link between neurons and the end result. Just because they happen at the same time does not prove they are linked with nothing in between. Come on, even science has said that just because two things happen at once does not mean they are necessarily related. Every morning I've woken up, the sun was shining on my side of the earth... wow... it must be MY fault!?
A Spook In The Sky that Wills the World? That's as illogical as it gets!
I never said existence had to be logical. You can't know the world beyond your own senses (no one can). Who are you to say what's really going on in it? We logically interpret inputs, yes. Logically, since I have no goddamn clue what's happening beyond my senses, I do *not* claim to know for certain what's going on (which you seem to find it really easy to do). Science interprets that which we can observe... and only that. What is to say there isn't something else that cannot be observed through scientific means? Logically, if one thing exists, that which can be observed through scientific means, its only logical to assume the possibility of that which cannot be observed through scientific means. Logically, one must assume that if in existence, there exists that which obeys logic, one must assume the possibility of that which does not obey logic.
Wrong. They appeared because of the way our brains are organized. Marvin Minsky (a principal founder of Al) and Michael Gazzaniga (one of the major workers in split-brain research) have independently come to a virtually identical model of the mind. Both view minds as vast collections of interacting, largely parallel (co-conscious) modules, or "agents." The lowest level of such a society of agents consists of a small number of nerve cells that innervate a section of muscle. A few of the higher level modules have been isolated in clever experiments by Gazzaniga, some of them on split-brain patients. One surprise from this work is that we seem to have our mental modules arranged in a way that guarantees we will form beliefs. What we believe in depends, at least in part, on what we are exposed to and the order in which we are exposed. Gazzaniga argues that we slowly evolved the ability to form beliefs because the ability provides a major advantage in surviving. Being able to infer, that is to form new beliefs, and to learn, in the sense of acquiring such beliefs from others, was a major advance over learning by trial and error. Being able to pass the rare new ways our ancestors found for chipping rock or making pots from person to person and generation to generation was vital in allowing humans to spread over the earth. But as this ability became the norm, communicating human minds formed a new "primal soup" in which a new kind of non-biological evolution, that of replicating information patterns or memes, could get started. A wide variety of competing memes has evolved in the intervening seventy thousand years or so. It should not be surprising that the survivors of this process, like astrology or religions, are so effective at inducing their hosts to spread and defend them.
I did not read one thing in there to support the last sentence. Sorry. At least assuming no extra text was left out, they're referring to 'beliefs' in the most general form possible (ie, the belief that chipping rocks and using the sharper pieces to kill animals is more efficient than using dull rocks). Nothing there gives the advantage of 'making up' religion. its only in things experienced that beliefs are created. did someone experience god? i dunno. i wasn't there. neither were you.
What ... no. Science explores and explains the world by the scientific method. Religion is a delusion-inducing disease. They're "competing ideas" in the memetic sense, but one systematically explores reality, and the other is a dangerous delusion about an imaginary friend that really hates you unless you worship it.
Stop comparing apples and oranges. I'm not trying to justify one specific religion. Until you target your arguments away from a specific religion, i do not see any intellectual result coming from this exchange. If you actually focus on only the notion of religion,
science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. *some* religions may be, but its not inherently mutually exclusive. thats a property of the given religion in question, not of religion itself. many people believe only various portions of many of the organized religions because they just exclude the points that don't make sense. and its their right to as well since many of the rules they choose not to follow were made by man and not even attributed to any influence from gods or God.
I find it comical that any educated man thinks he understands all thats going on. I only admit that I have a belief of whats going on and I may be wrong. You call yourself certain. I find it a laughable notion to assume that you can know for sure that what we observe is really what's going on. Since its untestable, unverifiable, its only an idea at best. You interpret reality how you want. The fact that no God or gods have talked to you does not mean they've never talked to anybody (i personally don't think they have either, but i can't be certain). The fact that logic is a comprehensive system does not necessarily mean there is no system beneath it that cannot be described by logic. You say science provides facts, but its provides facts based under its own definition. Logic excludes anything illogical, but thats not to say they cannot exist. In fact, the more logic of people may be blinded to this other reality. hell, maybe magic is possible, i have no clue. i'm an extremely logical mind and logically speaking i cannot with certainty say that reality as we know it is concrete. i have no proof of its existence beyond my senses and we all know the senses can be fooled quite easily (we found that out through science =P). I'm fine when someone jokes about religion, but to ridicule it as close-minded as the religious zealots. I'm just saying until you can prove existence beyond your own fingers to me, then maybe you'll get somewhere with debunking religion. But until we can get past that last layer of how to interpret existence & reality, science is just a way to look at the world and in its OWN eyes, its obviously better than religion. religion is the same. i've chosen to look through the scientific viewpoint, but i keep in mind that they're two different views on the same thing. they're allowed to coincide if you let them. different sects of religion have all interpreted 'religion' in their own way. personally, i find they all did it incorrectly, but to point out one (or millions) of flaws in their system does not mean that somewhere there's a seed of truth that it all sprouted from.
Maybe i'll even give you that ridiculing some of a specific religion's ill-founded tenets is perfectly acceptable (as you do in your arguments... none of which really speak against religion itself, only specific forms), but to ridicule the *notion* of religion is ridiculous in it self... logically (not scientifically) speaking.
Making jokes about it for the sake of humor is completely welcome. I find political incorrectness highly amusing.
religious ideas are as valid as scientific ones, you just don't have to agree with them. i don't agree with most of them. however, i'm not going to assume that simply because i think a certain way, that all other ways of thinking are false. religious ideas sprouted in various parts of the world without interaction with each other. to me, thats enough evidence that its worth thinking that possibly there's something else. since all other evidence that was ever proposed was given to man, a lot of it was abused. just as science can be abused, so can religion. some religion is harder to justify than others, but its simply arrogant to assume that its based completely in lies. i don't know the truth about existence, neither do you, nor does science. i don't see why science should be granted a monopoly on truth. science itself cannot be proven beyond observation. "I've done it x times, therefore I assume it happens all the time." What's the value of x have to be until the second statement is always true? That's what science is. I believe in science. I just don't see why followers of science have to go and act all superior. Back in the day, thats exactly how the religious folk acted against the non-religious. I'm am not so foolish as to assume I'm certain that science has all the answers. I believe it does, but I'll admit that I know there's a possibility I'm wrong. religion and science can coexist. its just both science and religion are too stubborn on both their points. religion won't give up on the foolish idea that it is 100% correct and has no need to change. Science won't give up on the idea that maybe there exists things that it can't explain. Most religious institutions have become overgrown with dogma introduced by man and has no spiritual reasoning behind it. Just because it's had its fair share of corruption, does not mean that everything within it is false. The very idea that a majority of religions share some common basic tenets is cause for further exploration. Philosophy and religion are extremely important to society. They gave rise to science. Science for science's sake is extremely dangerous. If I could create an AI so powerful that it'd most likely take over mankind, should I do it? Of course not. But if I were to be a true follower of science, I'd have to. It's progress. Its technology and shouldn't be kept in check, right? Science and religion both have faults and advantages. Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We have guided missiles, but misguided men." Science needs to be kept in check. Unfortunately science may not be enough to keep itself in check. That's where philosophy comes in. We shouldn't do anything we can just because we can. And not everything in religion is definitely based in fiction. I'll give you that a lot of it is fiction, but for so many people to come to the same conclusions w/o science... i think there has to be something there. maybe there's another side to logic. there's the cold logical world, but maybe there's a metaphysical world along side it that we're all tapped into somewhat. i have no friggin' clue. but there are things in this world that are still unexplainable by science (a lot of times people call them hoaxes, but some of them are pretty damn convincing) and that science even says can't be possible. granted, just because it can't explain it now doesn't mean it never can, but there's also no proof that it ever will either. science is just a way to interpret reality. religion is another. you say science is superior because it uses the scientific method. whoopity doo.
I believe in science too. I'm just trying to get the different schools of thought to start working together instead of warring with each other. Maybe its not a war in the physical sense, but there is a war. And hey, if there's no afterlife and no reason to attribute value to anything cause its all just random bits of matter, why care about the rest of the world in the first place?
I'll admit it was a little overzealous, but still not far from the point. Wanting to enforce some strict way of thinking and to outlaw and disallow free thought is very close to being terroristic. While it may not be as explosive as a suicide bomber, its just as destructive.
your reasoning on your first point was already proven false. there are many things that we do not see that we now know to be in existence. of course, back in the day, if you said it existed, you were considered crazy. saying you can't find it, therefore it doesn't exist, is far from being an exhaustive proof.
a natural god does not imply humans are allowed god-like behavior. just as we can exert rule over lower beings, why do we assume we're the highest form of existence in nature? just because you can't see it, you assume its not there? how do we know there's not some higher level of being in our own realm of existence? why do you assume we are the pinnacle of evolution? hell, maybe we're allowed to evolve to gods, but that doesn't mean we have to be capable of it now. i don't know the answers, i just feel its a little early for one side or the other to claim victory. yea, science proves to be more useful here, but maybe there really is an afterlife. maybe death just frees our consciousness from this physical cage. who am i to know? maybe there is something to be gained for the afterlife, here in this life. i don't believe it, but i don't see any reason for me to then go off and say my point of view has been proven beyond a doubt. What can be easier to believe than "well, i don't see it, therefore its not there." Just because no one wants it doesn't make it not easy. It's easy to stick your hand in a toilet and eat crap, doesn't mean anybody is gonna do it (and no, i'm not comparing your theory to that, i'm just using an extreme example that desire doesn't have to play a role in whether something is easy or not). The harder beliefs to hold are the ones that are actually difficult to believe, ie less reason to believe it is so. It'd be really hard to hold a belief that mice are actually running experiments on us and they're responsible for the creation of the world. The less evidence there is, the harder the belief. However, that doesn't make it not possible. Just the fact that religion crept up in isolated spots and didn't spread from one source lends credence to the idea that religion may have its foot in the door of something bigger but just might not have gotten it right yet.
and yes, its a valid theory that everything is a mistake. though its far from being 'easy' to prove. it lacks any testable characteristics just like virtually every other theory of existence.
than stop condemning other points of view. thats all my post is trying to point out. you ridicule another point of view, but really have no basis to say your pov is any better than someone else's.
Cause & effect can be no more than circumstantial. It can never be certain that time flows forward. Perhaps it flows backward and we only perceive things as such. When you get into the realm of existence beyond what we can observe (such as the natural order of things), all your observations are moot. They can only go so far. Patterns are far from being overwhelming evidence. How do we know the future can not affect the past? Cause & effect already has a glaring flaw in the creation of existence. If cause & effect has such overwhelming evidence, where was it in play there? Effect: creation, cause: ???? I invite you to fill in the blank. Until you can fill it in without any doubt (and last I checked, the model for the beginning of the universe was far from universally accepted and changes dramatically all the time). Yea, you can say 'big bang'. But what caused the big bang? Where did the matter come from in the big bang? Doesn't the law of conservation have to apply here? Where'd all that energy come from?
Faith is believing something that you feel is true, but can't prove. You believe cause & effect is universal, that's fine. So do I. However, some folks believe faith has already proven itself. Maybe you and I just have a different level of how much circumstantial evidence amounts to 'overwhelming.' Maybe using logic to prove itself superior falls under the same fallacy as religious people using faith to prove itself superior. Maybe we all just need to realize that we don't know everything, there are unknowns in this universe, and we should stop calling each other names and try to find a way to coexist peacefully. If you really want to go about this scientifically, you'd have to admit there's a chance you're wrong. i mean, until you can actually prove something to be false, how can you discount it as a possibility, no matter how small? there's a chance i'm just a floating consciousness dreaming about all of this, but i don't believe it to be true. doesn't mean its not. doesn't mean that someone who does believe it is stupid either. they may prove themselves to be if they can't provide reasonable arguments, like a large portion, but not all of religion has done. Some religious people are completely sane and have arguments just as strong as yours are for science. The problem comes when trying to choose who should make the rules. Personally, I think science is the best choice, though technically I'm a little biased. personally, i feel science is the least biased of all possible schools of thought. again, thats just how i feel.
some people may find their assumptions about religion 'useful' for their purposes. what right do you have to say your assumptions (based solely on them 'being useful') is any better than someone else's? My whole argument is that you shouldn't discount something just because you disagree with it. If you can prove it to be false, than so be it. But, contrary to popular belief, religion has yet to be proven false. It may not have been proven true, but that doesn't mean its not. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it not so. I agree that I think religion is mostly false, but its my belief that its false. I'd never go out and impose that belief on someone else. And religion wasn't founded to fight wars or to condemn some other point of view as immoral (though apparently science can condemn another point of view out of some sense of superiority). Religion says its true cause its stated to be so. Science says its true cause its stated to be so. They are what most of everyone's arguments boil down to. Yea, I go for science, but as an intellectual thinker, I can't say the other is absolutely wrong. I don't believe it but I won't deny them the right to believe it. Nor will I be ignorant enough to think that I have all the answers. Always be prepared to be wrong. I don't think I am, but I might be. Hell, maybe it is the right thing to go out condemning people for believing in something different than you, but thats not what I believe. So, maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but personally, I believe there's no point to be overly zealous on either side. It just makes you look as crazy as them.
Actually, he brings up a fairly good point. While the brain may be used in thinking, no one has ever physically located a "thought." While, it may be jumping to conclusions to call it the soul, its definitely a wide held belief that 'thoughts' may very well be intangible.
When did any religion ever turn peaceful?
They're all
1/an excuse for the regime they serve
2/a set of fairytales that explains how the world came to be (not, but it took us a while to find out)
3/a set of answers to the Eternal Questions
4/a social bonding thing
5/an excuse to go kill the neighbours in the name of God, but our real need is to either conquer their place so as to use their resources, or get all killed so that our genes will replicate when their men will have captured our women. (Capture-bonding is a survival trait coming directly from this causal loop btw.) Those are all ways in which religion was abused and those who did so were hiding behind it, but they did not always believe it. And if they did, it was usually misinterpreted. When did religion ever turn peaceful? when it is responsible for a huge amount of charity and sacrifice the well-being of the rest of the world. Science is a double-edged sword as well. Was it peaceful when it was used to create atomic and nuclear weapons? Was it peaceful when it created the worst weapons(chemical, biological, and others) known in the history of mankind?
You need to stop providing a straw man argument. You're assumption is false, that crack-addicts are the same as religious folks. You may believe that, but its far from being objective. Unfortunately, you provide no real basis of reasoning that you're belief is somehow better and that somehow entitles you to forcefully remove any competing argument and then have the audacity to say that if anyone else forcefully tries to keep their belief alive, that they much be terrorists. If you remove all the subjective statements from your post, you sound EXACTLY like a terrorist. You are zealous of your belief and you have no problem forcefully imposing it upon others. I have no problem with religion as long as it doesn't impose itself upon me. But it'd be hypocritical of me to than go do the exact same thing. Science zealots are nutcases just as much as religious zealots are.
I know that it's the easiest belief to hold, that there's nothing. but it fails to provide any objective answers just as much as any other particular belief does.